Canada Wild Rye

You'll know Canada wild rye by the way it droops from the weight of its heavy, bearded seed heads earlier in the summer. This is a cool-season grass, meaning that it grows quickly in the early summer, as opposed to the later warm-season grasses, such as little bluestem. The "beard" of this wild rye grass consists of long, bristly awns. It grows from three to five feet tall in height, in bunches, and so it is among the native bunchgrasses. Though this grass grows in disturbed roadsides and fallow fields, it is a native prairie plant.